Another Fish

Last night we caught another fish. We had only had the line out for a little while when Barb saw it jump into the air. I was down below doing dishes, the diligent galley slave that I am. So I grabbed the video camera and went on deck and filmed Barb as she hauled the fish to the boat. There is not a lot of playing the fish that is being dragged at six knots and you have him on a 500 pound test rope. It is mainly meat hunting. But never the less it is a little bit of excitement in our day. Barb kept saying it was not very big at all, but when she got it to the boat it was over feet long. So I gaffed the fish and hoisted it onto the cockpit were I spent the next two hours cleaning it. It is really hard to clean a four foot fish, balancing it on a one gallon bucket while the boat is rolling back and forth. It wants to slide this way and that. I also need a longer filet knife if I am going to clean things like this. The meat of this fish was totally white, while the meat of the tuna was as red as beef. If the tuna was just sitting in a bowl you would think it was. We ended up with two fillets that were about three feet long and at the thickest part about two and a half inches thick and eight inches wide. A lot of meat to say the least. So we fried up some samples last night, fish sandwich for breakfast, and fish tacos for dinner tonight. We have froze about half of it and will have more fish tomorrow. We did all this while we were still making are 150 miles for the day. We are still fling the spinnaker almost continuously. At times during the nights when the apparent wind pipes up to twenty knots it is a little much but I seem to be able to keep it under control. It tends to make for very long nights though.
I think that I am ready to get off the boat and walk around for a while. The lack of sleep and constant movement are starting to work on me. At times I feel a little too isolated and Barb catches the brunt of that. I try to sleep some during the day but that is not always that easy. Today Barb tried to shake me to wake up, but I didn’t wake even when she shook me. I miss being able to call friends or just stop by and see them. Sometimes it makes me homesick. I miss you all!!!